The Crown finished itself in silence.
One heartbeat it was just a ring of scattered light in the torn sky, a suggestion of a circle stitched from bone and fire and broken stone. The next heartbeat it was whole—an unbroken loop hanging above the Demon Capital, turning lazily, shedding flakes of red-gold ash that never touched the ground.
Every demon in the courtyard stared up at it.
I watched their faces more than the Crown. Eyes wide, mouths open, chests rising too quickly. Even the veteran soldiers, the ones with scars across their horns and old burns on their throats, had the look of people seeing something they'd never been trained for.
"Is that…" one of them whispered, voice cracking. "A sign?"
"Yes," Sareth said softly. "It's a sign."
Lyra tilted her head. "It's earlier than I expected," she said. "Most worlds make us work harder before they give us their heart."
"Maybe it's just desperate," Cirel murmured.
"Or smart," Kaen said, grinning. "It's skipping the foreplay."
Veyra giggled.
Beside me, Lysa couldn't look away from the Crown. Her pupils were pinpricks in her eyes. Hallowmere's softer light had never made anything like this.
"What is it?" she breathed. "What… is that?"
"Our Crown," I said.
The words felt right. Heavy. Familiar, even though this was the first time a realm had bothered to make one properly.
On the platform above us, Lord Vaedros squinted against the glow. His younger daughter clutched his cloak with both hands now, eyes wide and wet.
"It's beautiful," she whispered again. Her voice shook, but the word was steady.
The consort drew in a sharp breath, silver eyes reflecting the ring of light. "My lord," they rasped, "you cannot—"
"Cannot what?" Vaedros asked. "Call it what it is? A crown recognizes a ruler. This one just took longer to decide."
The Crown turned faster.
Each rotation left a faint afterimage in the torn sky—a ghost circle that slowly faded. With every pass, the realm shook. The palace stones vibrated. Cracks thickened in the distant cliffs. Rivers of molten rock sloshed where they hung.
"It wants someone," Alinor said quietly. "It's listening to us."
Lysa tore her gaze away from the sky and looked at me. "You're not going to take it," she said. It wasn't a question; it was a plea.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because this is his world," she said, jerking her head toward Vaedros. "His Crown. You already broke it. Taking that too is—"
"Appropriate?" Veyra suggested.
"Polite," Cirel added.
Lyra smiled slightly. "I do like that she still believes in ownership."
Lysa's fingers dug into the broken staff she still carried. "If you take that," she said, staring at the Crown, "whatever's left will die."
"Whatever's left is already dying," Sareth pointed out. "With or without a king."
Kaen stretched his arms above his head. "Less talking," he said. "More crowning."
The Crown pulsed, flare of white-gold on one side, deep black-red on the other. A fine thread of light dropped from its lower curve and hung there, quivering, waiting.
An invitation.
Lyra glanced sideways at me. "You going to let us fight for it," she asked lightly, "or is this one yours?"
Veyra tilted her head, weighing something invisible. "It feels like him," she said.
"Smells like him too," Kaen agreed. "Ruin and kings and pretty endings."
Cirel's smile sharpened. "It would be fun to steal it from him," she said. "But I can't deny it. The world's staring at you, Auren."
Alinor hummed under her breath, a tune that matched the Crown's pulse. "This one is yours," she said. "The next can argue."
Sareth nodded once, chains clinking softly. "The first should go to the one who started the fall."
Lysa looked between all of us and recoiled as if burned. "You're talking like this is normal," she said. "Like this has happened before."
"In pieces," Lyra said. "Shards. Fragments. Partial crowns that never fully formed. This is the first whole one. It's… special."
The Crown's thread of light swung like a pendulum. Each swing drew a thin line of brightness toward me, as if measuring distance.
"Go on," Veyra whispered. "Take it."
I stepped forward.
Demons shifted back instinctively, feet scraping stone, wings rustling. The air around me felt different now—thinner, sharper. The miasma from Eclipsera thickened, drawn upward by the Crown's presence.
Vaedros watched me, eyes narrowed. His daughter clung to him like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Lysa reach toward my sleeve as if to stop me, then drop her hand. Even she knew there was no point.
The thread of light dropped lower as I approached the center of the courtyard.
It dangled directly above my head now, flickering.
The world held its breath.
I lifted my hand.
—
To the demons watching, it must have looked like the moment right before a blade fell.
Their world had already been broken by these seven. Their sky torn, their land cracked, their cities crumbling. Now, one of those intruders was reaching for the symbol every demon knew in their bones: the circlet that meant rule.
Vaedros' heart hammered so hard it hurt.
He had worn a crown once. A heavy thing of bone and metal and rune-etched amber. It lay somewhere under the rubble of the palace now, lost when the first tremors hit. He had thought it gone forever.
He hadn't understood that crowns weren't objects.
They were decisions.
The child at his side shook. "Father," she whispered, "if he takes it, what happens to us?"
He didn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
Because he knew exactly.
His regret tasted like ash.
He remembered the night Seraphine had returned with these strangers at her back. The way they had walked into his hall without bowing. The way the white-haired one had made his consort's head flicker with a few words. The way the golden-haired leader had smiled like mercy and spoken like gravity.
He remembered thinking, I can use them.
He remembered thinking, I am still the one with a throne.
He watched Auren's hand rise now and understood that thrones and crowns had never been his.
He had been borrowing someone else's game piece.
"He was right," he murmured.
"Who?" the consort snarled.
"The priest," Vaedros said. "The one we burned when he said there were gods so old they didn't know what worship was."
The consort made a broken noise.
Below, Auren's fingertips brushed the light-thread.
—
Heat.
Cold.
Emptiness.
All of it. None of it. The instant my skin met the thread, something punched through my chest—not physical, not really, but enough to knock the air from my lungs for a heartbeat.
The Shattered Crown mark over my heart flared white-hot. Lines of light shot out from it, racing across my skin, threading under flesh like molten wire.
The Crown dropped.
Not like a rock. Like a decision. One moment it hung high overhead, spinning. The next it was simply there, lowering around me, its ring widening just enough to pass over my head.
I didn't move.
It didn't touch me in the way normal things do. It didn't rest on my hair or press against bone. It sank into me.
The demons saw a blaze of light swallow me, silhouette sharpening inside it. Lysa saw my outline blur, the edges of my body fraying like burned paper. The Seven saw more.
They saw the world accept something inevitable.
For a second, everything inside the glow was only lines.
Faint, golden-orange lines forming the shape of me: long limbs, narrow shoulders, hair a waterfall of light, Eclipsera an arc of darkness carved into the brightness. The inverted crosses of my eyes became solid, burning marks in that outline.
Then the light folded inward.
The Crown reappeared—not above me this time, but around me. Floating just a hand's breadth above my head, rotated at a slight angle. Up close, it wasn't a solid loop; it was made of small segments of the demon realm's essence: shards of obsidian, drops of cooled magma, fragments of bone and charred banners, all linked by threads of red-gold light.
The Shards pulsed.
I inhaled.
Power slid into me like a blade into familiar flesh.
Not the wild, raging kind that came with true transformation. This was narrower, focused. A rule whispering itself in my ear.
Ash remembers.
The words weren't in any language. They weren't words at all. They were meaning.
"Dominion?" Lyra asked softly.
I smiled. "Ash," I said. My voice sounded the same and not. "What was burned. What was lost. What remains."
Kaen laughed, delighted. "You can command everything we've already ruined."
Lysa stared at me, at the floating Crown, at the faint lines of light now etched just under my skin like hidden tattoos. "What does that mean?" she demanded. "What… what are you going to do?"
I rolled my shoulders experimentally. The Crown drifted with the motion, always keeping its distance, always aligned above me no matter how I inclined my head.
The world felt different.
Before, the Demon Capital had been a collection of broken pieces: stones, bones, rivers, demons. Now it was a single thing in my awareness, like a drawing someone had tried to erase but hadn't finished.
I could see every ash mark. Every burn. Every memory of fire.
I could touch them if I wanted.
"Something quick," I said. "He deserves that much."
He.
Vaedros.
I turned to look at the demon king.
His face was unreadable now. No anger. No pleading. Just a strange calm, like a man who had finally, truly understood the size of the wave about to hit him.
"Lord Vaedros," I said.
He held my gaze without flinching. "King of nothing," he said. "That's what I am now. Say what you'll say, Ruin."
Ruin.
It fit.
"You were right," I said. "You should have worshiped us."
Somewhere behind me, Veyra giggled. Cirel snorted softly. Lyra made a small, approving noise.
Vaedros inclined his head very slightly, a parody of a bow. "Then allow me one request," he said.
Lysa stiffened. "He's going to beg for his life," she whispered.
He didn't.
"Make it quick," he said. "Don't leave my people to crumble slowly. If you must end us, end us in one breath."
I considered him.
"No," I said.
The demons around him flinched. His daughter gasped. The consort bared their teeth.
Vaedros' jaw clenched. "You said—"
"It won't be slow," I said. "But it won't be one breath, either. One breath is boring."
He stared at me. Then he laughed. It didn't sound broken this time. It sounded… resigned. Maybe even a little amused.
"I should have expected that," he said.
The ground shook harder.
Big fissures split the courtyard, stone slabs tilting, demons stumbling. The air grew hotter, then colder, then both at once. The sky dimmed, the torn wounds overhead widening until half the heavens were nothing but glowing red ruin.
Lysa clung to Lyra's threads and to my presence.
"How do we survive this?" she asked, voice raw.
"By staying near us," Sareth said.
"And not getting too interesting," Cirel added. "Interesting things break faster."
I lifted Eclipsera.
The Crown brightened.
Every ash mark in the Demon Capital stirred.
Burned banners along the walls rustled with a wind that wasn't there. Old scorch marks on the palace stones glowed faintly. The piles of dust where fallen towers used to be shivered and lifted, forming thin tendrils.
"What are you doing?" Lysa whispered.
"Finishing," I said.
I swept Eclipsera in a slow arc.
The miasma that usually poured from the blade didn't darken the air this time. It drew in. A wave of black leaked from every burned surface in the city, flowing toward the scythe like smoke running backward.
Charred wood. Scorched stone. Cooled magma. Dust that had once been homes, armor, flesh. All of it rose, lifted, condensed.
The demons watched, still as carved statues, as the ruins of their city unfell.
Not into buildings.
Into a storm.
Above the courtyard, all the gathered ash twisted into a vast halo—a swirling disk of gray and black and glowing embers, turning slowly around the floating Crown. The air hummed with the weight of every memory those cinders held: battles fought, pyres lit, sacrifices made.
"Dominion," Lyra said again, fascinated. "You're collecting their past."
"Recycling," Kaen said.
Veyra sighed happily. "It's so pretty when you play with corpses."
Lysa stared up at the ash-storm, jaw slack. "You're… you're making it worse."
"Better," I said mildly.
Then I closed my hand.
The halo collapsed.
Not downward.
Inward.
Every fragment of ash, every ember, every memory of fire condensed into a single point right above the Crown, a grain of darkness so small it was almost invisible.
The realm screamed.
I felt it vibrate through my bones—the sound of a world having a piece of itself stolen. The ground bucked. Demons cried out, clinging to each other, to broken pillars, to anything still solid.
Then the point of darkness dropped.
It sank into the Crown.
For a moment, nothing changed.
Then the Demon Capital began to fall.
Not the slow, crumbling fall of earthquakes or decay. A clean, precise collapse, like someone had pulled the middle from a tower of stones and the rest obeyed the new shape.
Streets folded inward. Walls bent. The palace groaned as its foundation slid toward us, toward the center of the courtyard, toward the spot where we stood.
Toward me.
Lysa shrieked, flinching back. Lyra's threads jerked her forward again, keeping her within the circle.
"We're going to be crushed," she gasped.
"No," Alinor said calmly. "We're the point everything falls into. It's different."
Buildings leaned, leaning more, more, until they weren't just leaning, they were flowing—stone and bone and metal folding into arcs that circled the courtyard. The demons on the edges screamed as the ground gave way beneath them. Some fell. Some tried to fly and found the air refusing to hold them up.
"Stay," I said softly.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't a command to them.
It was to the city.
The Crown vibrated. The collapsing structures jerked, halting mid-fall. Massive chunks of palace and wall hung at impossible angles around the courtyard, held in place by lines of ash that hadn't completely given up their shape.
We stood in the center of a frozen explosion.
Vaedros stared around in stunned disbelief. His consort trembled, clutching the edge of his armor. His daughter pressed against his side, eyes huge.
The demons in the courtyard panted, gasped, whimpered, but they were alive.
For the moment.
Lysa's breath came in ragged bursts. "You… you stopped it," she said. "You actually—"
"No," I said. "I posed it."
"Posed—?"
"Why end a world," Veyra mused, "if no one sees the pose?"
Kaen laughed. "Now the fun part."
The Crown's light dimmed slightly. I'd used it once. I could feel the limits already: one clean rewrite, one frozen moment. Anything after this would cost opportunity, would shatter the realm faster than it could scream.
Fine.
It was already almost over.
Vaedros looked down at me, then out at his suspended, crumbling city. "You're playing with us," he said. No accusation. Just fact.
"Yes," I said.
His lips twitched. "Then play your last move."
"Not yet," I replied.
He laughed—tired, breathless. "If there were another life," he said, "I'd like to meet you there with a world that could survive you."
"Then it wouldn't be worth visiting," Cirel said.
The little girl's fingers dug into Vaedros' cloak. "Father," she whispered, "I'm scared."
"I am too," he said quietly. "It's all right."
She swallowed hard. "Are we going to die?"
He didn't lie to her.
"Yes," he said. "But we'll see something no one else has before we do."
Her eyes brimmed. "Them?" she asked, nodding toward us.
"More than them," he said. "What they become when they get bored."
Lysa heard that.
She looked at me, at the floating Crown, at the halo of suspended ruin, at the cracks in the sky, and understood that there was another layer to this.
We hadn't transformed yet.
We hadn't needed to.
"This isn't even your full power," she whispered.
"No," Sareth said. "This is just an accessory."
She shivered.
I stepped forward again, Eclipsera resting against my shoulder. The Crown rotated slowly above me, ash-light flickering.
"Worlds don't end all at once," I said. "They end in loops. Echoes. Afterimages. This one is almost done. We just need our last pieces."
"Pieces?" Lysa asked.
"Rituals," Lyra said. "We've taken the Crown. We've chosen the pet. We'll decide the name soon. All that's left is souvenir, feast, mercy, and dream."
The word mercy made Lysa flinch.
"You have mercy?" she asked, incredulous.
"Rules are rules," Cirel said, shrugging.
My eyes drifted over the demons in the courtyard. Over the frozen arcs of collapsing palace. Over the cracks in the sky. Over Vaedros and his daughter.
"You wanted it quick," I said to him. "I said no. I'll compromise."
I lifted a hand.
The Crown responded.
Lines of light shot outward from it, connecting to seven points around the courtyard, forming a faint circle. One line stopped near Vaedros. Another brushed his daughter. A third touched the consort. A fourth grazed Lysa. The others landed in random clusters of demons: soldiers, servants, nobles huddled together.
"What are you doing?" Lysa asked.
"Choosing who sees the end clearly," I said.
The light at each point thickened, forming small, personal halos—rings of visibility, zones of slowed collapse. For the demons inside them, the world stayed sharp. For those outside, things blurred, edges softening as if they were sliding out of memory.
Vaedros looked down at the circle around his feet and nodded. "Witnesses," he said.
"Yes," I replied.
His daughter swallowed. "Does that mean we live?" she asked.
"For a bit longer," Veyra said.
"Long enough to regret everything properly," Cirel added.
Lysa looked at the small halo that now circled her and us. Outside it, some demons flickered, edges fading as the realm started to misremember them.
"This is mercy?" she whispered.
"It's the best we do," Sareth said.
The Crown dimmed a fraction more.
I nodded, satisfied. "Souvenir next," I said.
Lyra's gaze sharpened. "The ash point?"
"No," I said, tapping Eclipsera's handle against the stone. "Too obvious. We can take something smaller. Intimate."
My eyes fell on the Demon King's broken sword.
The runes on it flickered desperately, sucking at the world's failing magic.
I pointed the scythe's tip at it.
The metal jerked, tearing itself from Vaedros' grip and flying through the air. It shrank as it came, collapsing into a smaller, denser piece. By the time it reached me, it was no longer a sword but a long, narrow shard of blackened steel, runes still glowing faintly along one side.
I caught it in my free hand.
"Souvenir," I said.
Vaedros flexed his empty hand once, then lowered it. "Fitting," he said. "You take my last weapon. I never deserved it anyway."
Lysa watched, wide-eyed. "You collect… pieces of worlds," she said.
"Pieces of stories," Alinor corrected absentmindedly.
Veyra leaned closer to study the shard. "What will you do with it?" she asked.
"I don't know yet," I said. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything."
Kaen snorted. "You're such a poet when you're crowned."
The Crown above me flickered, as if amused.
The realm's pulse stumbled again.
It was time.
"Feast," Sareth said quietly.
"Feast," I agreed.
We didn't need food.
Not in the way mortals did.
Our feast was something else.
Veyra sat down cross-legged on the broken stones. Lyra settled beside her, hands folded neatly. Kaen took his place on a chunk of suspended wall, one leg dangling. Cirel sprawled on her back, staring up. Alinor perched on a slanted slab, dress pooling unnaturally. Sareth remained standing, hands clasped.
I stayed in the center, Crown above me, Eclipsera resting across my shoulders once more.
Lysa stared at us like we'd lost our minds. "You're going to sit?" she demanded. "Now? While everything is—"
"Yes," Cirel said. "It's our tradition."
"We always eat while worlds die," Veyra added. "It makes the flavor better."
"There is nothing to eat," Lysa snapped.
"There's everything," Lyra said. "Listen."
She did.
At first, all Lysa heard was her own heartbeat and the ragged breaths of demons. Then, slowly, other sounds slid into focus.
The low groan of stone being stretched past endurance. The hiss of magma cooling on air that didn't know which way was down. The quiet, broken sob of a mother in one of the halos clutching a child. The whispered prayer of a soldier who had stopped believing in gods an hour ago. The way the sky cracked like glass, each fracture singing a different note.
The end of a world had a sound.
We ate it.
Not literally. Not with mouths.
We took it in.
We absorbed the story this realm was trying to tell as it died. Its arrogance. Its pride. Its little moments of kindness. Its cruelty. Its belief that it would last longer than the ones below it. All of it poured into the space between us, and we let it soak into our symbols.
My Shattered Crown mark gained a new line, jagged and hot. Lyra's Spiral Needle etched another loop. Veyra's Smiling Tear gained a second curve. Cirel's Broken Frame deepened its crack. Sareth's Crumbling Triangle lost another corner. Alinor's Fractured Eye added a second pupil. Kaen's Looping Flame kinked into a harsher turn.
Lysa watched, shivering.
"You really are monsters," she whispered.
Veyra opened one eye and looked at her. "Thank you," she said sincerely.
The sound of the world's pulse slowed.
We sat in silence when it stopped.
There was no more groaning stone. No more cracking sky. Just a strange, held breath.
Feast over.
The Crown was dim now.
One final ritual.
Mercy.
Their least favorite.
My favorite.
"You said one mercy per world," Lysa said softly. "What is it here? Them?" She gestured wildly at the demons in the halos. "You're sparing them?"
"For now," I said. "We don't decide everything all at once. That would be… wasteful."
Her throat worked. "Then what's your mercy?" she asked.
I looked up at Vaedros and his daughter.
At the consort. At the cluster of demons around them. At the old soldiers near the back. At the ones whose halos were already flickering.
My gaze passed over all of them and came back to the smallest figure.
The girl.
She met my eyes.
She was shaking, but she didn't hide.
"Little crown," Veyra murmured. "She's brave."
"She's doomed," Sareth said.
"Yes," I agreed. "Exactly."
I lifted Eclipsera one last time.
"Don't," Lysa whispered. "Don't kill her."
"I'm not," I said.
I drew a small line in the air.
The Crown flared.
A tiny spark fell from it—no bigger than a fingernail. White-gold at its center, edged in red and black. It drifted down, swaying, until it reached the girl and sank into her chest.
She gasped.
Vaedros grabbed her shoulders. "What did you do?" he snarled.
"Mercy," I said.
Her eyes widened. For a heartbeat, I saw them reflect not just the broken demon world, but other things—fields of grass, cities of glass, oceans of ink. Her shoulders straightened. Then she sagged again, panting.
"She will remember," Sareth said softly.
"Remember what?" Lysa demanded.
"Everything," Alinor said. "This death. The fall. The Crown. Us. Every time she wakes in any other world, in any other life, she'll carry this."
Lysa stared at the girl, horrified. "That's not mercy," she said. "That's torture."
"Memory is the kindest thing we have," Cirel said. "We usually take it away."
The child looked down at her hands, flexing them. She didn't understand yet. She would. Eventually.
Vaedros pulled her close, one hand on the back of her head. His eyes met mine.
"If she lives," he said, voice low and deadly, "she will hate you."
I shrugged. "She can stand in line."
He bared his teeth in something like a grin. "Good," he said. "Let at least one of us carry that properly."
The Crown shook.
That was it.
No power left.
The circle above me cracked, lines of light splintering. The segments of bone and fire and stone fell apart. The whole thing shattered into seven motes of glowing ash that spun in place for a second, then shot off—one into each member of the Seven.
Mine sank back into my Shattered Crown mark.
The world exhaled.
The frozen arcs of palace and wall dropped—not in slow motion this time, but in a rush. The suspended disaster finally landed.
Or it would have.
If the ground were still there.
The Demon Capital fell into red.
The halos held for a few seconds longer, little pockets of clarity as the rest of the realm turned into blur and light and noise around them. Lysa saw shapes bending, distances collapsing, colors inverting. She saw demons outside the circles stretch, thin, then vanish as if they'd never been born.
Then the halos broke too.
She felt something pull at her—behind her navel, behind her eyes, behind her heart. Not gravity. Not magic. Something more basic. The instinct of existence, moving things from place to place when their boxes broke.
She grabbed my sleeve on reflex.
Lyra's threads snapped taut.
The last thing Lysa saw of the demon realm was Vaedros on his cracked platform, daughter in his arms, consort at his side, head tipped back, laughing into the collapsing sky.
Then the world turned inside out.
—
Falling again.
This time we were used to it. The others barely reacted. Veyra stretched her arms. Kaen grinned into the void. Lyra watched stray motes of demon-world ash drift past. Cirel spun. Alinor hummed. Sareth simply turned his head as if tracking something only he could see.
Lysa screamed again.
Only for a moment.
Then she ran out of breath.
Her grip on me was iron. Her eyes streamed tears that the void swallowed.
I let her cling.
The Demon realm vanished above us. The rift closed like an eye.
For a heartbeat there was nothing but dark.
Then—
Light.
New.
Different again.
We burst out of the collapsing demon world into whatever waited below.
—
We landed on sand.
Hot, shifting, endless.
I sank a few inches before Eclipsera's haft thunked against something solid beneath the surface. Heat baked my face. The air shimmered.
I straightened, blinking.
We stood in the middle of a desert that stretched in every direction, dunes rolling like waves, sky a pale, washed-out blue. No buildings. No trees. No rivers. Just sand and heat and a faint, constant hiss of wind.
Beside me, Lysa collapsed to her knees, coughing. She clutched her chest where the fall had stolen her breath.
Veyra dropped into the sand on her back, laughing. "Again," she said. "I want to do it again."
Kaen paced in a slow circle, breathing deep. "Better," he said. "Cleaner. I like this air. No demons crying in it."
Lyra brushed grainy dust from her coat. It instantly changed color to blend with the desert tones. "Well," she said. "That's one world finished."
Cirel squinted at the horizon. "This one's empty," she mused. "We'll have to find something to ruin."
Alinor closed her eyes and tasted the new realm's hum. "It's quiet," she said. "Too quiet. It doesn't know it exists yet."
Sareth looked back up at the sky. For a second, there was a faint red scar high overhead where the demon world had been. Then it faded.
"Another layer down," he murmured.
Lysa coughed again and clawed at the sand, as if trying to dig her way back up to something that wasn't there anymore. "They're all… gone," she rasped. "They're really… gone."
"Yes," I said.
She turned her head to stare at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wild. "You smiled," she said hoarsely. "While it fell. You smiled."
"I usually do," I said.
She shuddered.
Then she laughed.
It surprised her more than anyone.
The sound tore out of her, ragged and hysterical, then smoothed into something almost… steady.
"I understand now," she said, voice barely more than a whisper. "Why my god went quiet."
"Too small," Cirel said.
"Too temporary," Sareth added.
"Too dead," Kaen said.
Lysa wiped her face with a shaking hand. She looked down at the marks on her wrists—the faint silver threads Lyra had left, now a delicate bracelet instead of a leash.
"Am I still your pet?" she asked.
"Yes," Veyra said immediately.
"Until you break," Lyra added.
"Or until something more interesting comes along," Kaen said.
She nodded slowly. "Good," she said. "Then I'll see how many times I can watch worlds die before I do."
The wind picked up, sending a spray of sand across us.
I lifted a hand and ran my fingers through my tied-back hair, gritty grains catching at the strands.
The Demon world was gone.
The Crown of Ash was spent.
We had a new realm now. A new sky. A new game.
I smiled.
"Let's see," I said, "if this one knows how to crack."
The desert hummed.
Very quietly.
For now.